ARRAKIS Ltd.

I am running again this year for the CSM, to represent all those that play the game outside of the reach and domination of the "establishment" of New Eden. Freedom fighters, rebels and guerilleros of New Eden, I am your candidate.

The PLooNS have dominated CSM XI, with a Null Sec centric majority of members belonging from the Goons and/or Pandemic Legion. These groups weight on the game we all share by pushing rules that favor maintaining their hold on New Eden. They use their influence to alter the rules of the game to their benefit, and I am running to provide a counter point to their influence within the CSM.

I have been playing since 2009, and played solo for half the time I have been in New Eden.

Like many new players attracted by the PvP aspect of this game, I headed to Null Sec quickly after I started playing, went through a training corp that funneled me in one of the largest coalition of the time, Northern Coalition. I did not find the game-style of blobbing and TiDi fleet fights very compelling, and I got tired of paying taxes and be just another DPS provider in their fleets. I was not ready to recruit others to beef up my personal income on their taxes and game-play time either.

So I went solo, I left the big alliances, played in Low sec for a bit then quickly moved into an empty C2 wormhole, doing PI and sleepers sites mostly. After a year and a half or so, I established contacts with players from a larger corp that were in a budding alliance, called Insidious Empire. I decided to return to play with a larger group to check it out again. After a few months, this group decided to join the goons, and soon thereafter the B0tlords accords were signed by the power players of Null Sec. This was too much for me, and I left the goons to return to my solo play-style. I returned in a C3, and built my first capital, while harassing larger Null Sec groups from Wormhole space, thanks to my NS static.

I also ran for CSM XI and CSM X to combat the influence of established power group working to protect their incomes. I was a big fan of the announced siphons mechanic, that got nerfed to uselessness even before being launched by the CSM. This is what prompted me to run for CSM, to try to counter the voices of the power-players trusting the CSM seats to the benefit of their own play-styles that I did not share.

I also started creating the concept of the Minarchist Revolution and decided to help the Minarchist Space Project, to establish a Minmatar Null Sec bloc while differentiating ourselves from the corrupt Minmatar Republic. I did some flying for the Minmatar Faction Warfare, and even if not very active, I am proud to have been in one of Minmatar Faction Warfare best corp at the time where Minmatars won all systems in the FW zone.

With my other characters, I fought with MOA against the goons before World War Bee became a thing, and I am now helping defend Tribute against the invasion of PanFam. Like Brave before, Pandemic Legion wants to take CO2 down so as to not let competing groups grow enough to become a menace to their imperialistic hegemony and their ISK making operations across Null Sec.

I fight in New Eden for Freedom and against the "establishment" and its corruptions.

I believe the CSM is a lobbyist group, where so far all the places have been trusted by those players representing Null Sec and the older power-players, the master puppeteers of New Eden. I believe other play styles and newer players who did not sell their souls as lobbyists for the established powers need to be represented to help defend features that would not benefit only the power-players playstyle. They want each of us to pay them rent, taxes and I am a prime example of a player that does not accept that.

The CSM must have independent voices that can balance the voices of the PLooNS when they want to alter new game features to their benefit. One example are the siphons that could have hit passive ISKs moon mining income with an active gameplay, the CSMs never denounced the API that was ratting them out. Previous CSMs have tainted multiple rules designed to curve the influence of the larger groups. The rapid regeneration of entosis nodes even in systems the owners do not actively occupy is an example of such corruption that previous CSMs have brought to new rules. More recently, the limitation of the game of Alts to Omega clones only is another scandalous meddling to prevent newer players, and more casual players, to develop multiple accounts like most power-players do. Instead they want to funnel these new players and more casual players to join them, so they can continue to accumulate wealth and power to prevent the rise of new powers. This is the real reason of the current war in Tribute against CO2, which is nothing other than a war to protect their established interests, much like kicking Brave to the curve was a few years back.

This is why I run for CSM XII, to give a voice to those that do not have one.

The kind of concepts I would defend if I was elected can be sampled below

Better expose the influences of older players.

When dealing with a pilot, you have no idea of the history of the player behind this alt, as the other alts are easily kept separated and obfuscated. This favor older power-players, with the means to plex multiple accounts, and make it very difficult to create emerging groups while keeping an open recruiting policy. These influences must be exposed, and the consequences of an alt actions against other pilots must follow the player around, not just the alt. Spying is the more risk-free activity one can do in New Eden, and it only favors those that already are part of the "establishmen. I favor establishing benefits from linking alts of the same player together, to encourage players to link themselves their alts together.

Reduce the effectiveness of out of game data through API by creating a API fog of war

Intel obtained via out-of-game tools fed with automated API is getting out of hand. The worst example was the siphons, totaly made useless by these, but the dicature of the killboards impact the game we all share, narrowing play-styles possibilities significantly. I favor intel gathered by activity in-game rather than intel obtained via out-of-game resources.for example, I support adding a privacy check box for each pilot, that would prevent their name to appear on killmails if checked, and prevent destructed modules to show up on those kill mails. All killmails would still be generated, and attributed to an "anonymous" entry for each corp when displayed on the killboards. This would limit the intel people can get on others from the killboards without removing the stats at the corps and alliances levels.

Make it more diffcult for large alliances to maintain control of vast territories where they are not active directly

Players empires should not be able to defend the systems at their fringes of their domain as easily as they defend their core. Fro example, the current uniform regeneration of node timers allows vast swat of territories to be under the control of power players that are not even active in all the systems they claim, and thus limit the expansion of smaller groups. With a longer window of active nodes, the competition for farther system would become more difficult for the larger alliances, leading to more fragmented soveriegnty, which is a good thing for the game and the interactions between players. Rental empires should be dismantled via changes of the game rules. The NEw sov system has made great strides in that direction, but did not go far enough yet.

Continue the efforts to minimize the efficiency of blobs

Many progresses have been done on this front in recent years, including the removal of off-grid boosting or the addition of command destroyers. Another example of something I would tackle is making bridging ships automatically jump at the end of their bridges, forcing them to be part of the combat, and forcing the larger groups with the means to do so to increase the number of pilots bridging others, rather than using 100% trust-proof alt account of the power-players. The power-players must be forced to relinquish their control to other players to maximize the benefit of their numbers.

Develop more simulations for new players, to expose them to PVE elements of the game before they have to undock

The introduction of the fitting simulation is a great step forward for all players. For new players, it could be tied to a PVE simulation done within their station of origin that would help them practice PVE missions with simulated ships, without any rewards and without any risks of interference by other oplayers, until they feel the simulation has made them feel ready to undock and find their PvE in New Eden.

Only one term for CSM members

Long term CSM members create the same issues of undue influences that we see in real life from lifetime politicians. CSM XI has shown a CSM that has done its work (albeit in favor of the PLooNS mainly) despite having 13 out of 14 members being new. So we can, as a community, advance new CSM members every year and keep the CSM fresh, relevant and active.

While I'm more than a touch biased on this (Three terms, and I'll be running for a fourth), my personal feeling is that having some people from previous CSMs available is useful. There's some institutional knowledge which is beneficial to pass between CSMs, along with pre-established relationships.

While I'm more than a touch biased on this (Three terms, and I'll be running for a fourth), my personal feeling is that having some people from previous CSMs available is useful. There's some institutional knowledge which is beneficial to pass between CSMs, along with pre-established relationships.

... you are also the main API lobbyist in the CSM, which likely makes you biased against my API fog of War agenda too at the very least.

I did not count Gorski, as his previous participations before CSM XI were done midterm, through replacement. Last year was the first year he was elected from the get-go.

The Mongo Tree

PURPLE HELMETED WARRIORS

Your "Fog of war" thing is an interesting take, and your comments about the syphons misguided.

The POS api was actually modified post-syphon release, to try make it harder to detect a siphon, but quite simply, given the API's that existed before their introduction, it wasn't going to be possible to make siphons undetectable without just chopping that portion of the API off, and considering the number of tools that existing which utilized that part of the API, not only would that of been a damn shame, as 3rd party development is (in my biased opinion) one of the best parts of EvE, but also caused public outcry as the users, and creators of these tools are left out in the cold.

As for your comments about killboards, there's plenty of kills that go unreported, and if you take a look at many large entitites i.e your dreaded Ploons, you'll see "REDACTED" for system names etc, for a set time after the kill is generated(On their internal bored). A kill can only be "reported" by two players, the person who got the final blow, and the person who lost the ship. If you don't want your kills getting posted to killboards, don't put your API into them and you've cut down the posting already.

As for tieing alts together? The spy meta is as much eve, as permadeath is, and removing it would be a blow to the game. Also, why should people be forced to only play one persona in EvE? For example I love scamming, but would never scam using the "Christy Cloud" character. EvE is a multi-faceted game and alts help players to experience that.

--Edit :Regarding the API's CCP are already making steps, albeit baby steps, towards making the API less intrusive, the main aspect of this being that ESI is character based, rather than account based. How this is going to play into nullsec level politics, we don't know. But it's sure to have consequences.

Your "Fog of war" thing is an interesting take, and your comments about the syphons misguided.

The POS api was actually modified post-syphon release, to try make it harder to detect a siphon, but quite simply, given the API's that existed before their introduction, it wasn't going to be possible to make siphons undetectable without just chopping that portion of the API off, and considering the number of tools that existing which utilized that part of the API, not only would that of been a damn shame, as 3rd party development is (in my biased opinion) one of the best parts of EvE, but also caused public outcry as the users, and creators of these tools are left out in the cold.

You can find here more details about my position on siphons in my frist campaign, including a post by CCP clearly stating that siphons were not to be detected by API. If the knowledge that siphons would be detected, and that was a technical necessity, I am sure other discussions could have been held to balance the siphon differently.I am not going to focus more on those this year as passive moon income only has a few months left anyway. Still, I do hope the concept of active gameplay siphoning passive income will exist in the future, as this is a design that by its nature would affect more the larger and richer entities of the game to the benefit of the smaller ones.

Christy Cloud wrote:

As for your comments about killboards, there's plenty of kills that go unreported, and if you take a look at many large entitites i.e your dreaded Ploons, you'll see "REDACTED" for system names etc, for a set time after the kill is generated(On their internal bored). A kill can only be "reported" by two players, the person who got the final blow, and the person who lost the ship. If you don't want your kills getting posted to killboards, don't put your API into them and you've cut down the posting already.

If only one of the player has given his API to his corp/alliance, the killmail will be reported no matter what the other player choses. A killmail has to be reported manualy only if neither player belongs to a killboard driven group, which most groups are nowadays. So the odds of a kill not uploaded are really low...

Christy Cloud wrote:

As for tieing alts together? The spy meta is as much eve, as permadeath is, and removing it would be a blow to the game. Also, why should people be forced to only play one persona in EvE? For example I love scamming, but would never scam using the "Christy Cloud" character. EvE is a multi-faceted game and alts help players to experience that.

I am not talking about removing the spy meta. Spies, betrayals and scams are part of Eve because they are also a part of our social construct, and Eve is as much a sci-fi experience as a social one.

The only thing I am pointing out is that there is no drawbacks in the game for having a spy account, and this is the most risk free activity in the game.

My suggestion would introduce a minor economic drawback to not chosing to link one account to the same player's other accounts, and leave to each player the decision to link their account together, with a litttle economic incentive to do so.

Pentag Blade

Curatores Veritatis Alliance

Your "Fog of war" thing is an interesting take, and your comments about the syphons misguided.

The POS api was actually modified post-syphon release, to try make it harder to detect a siphon, but quite simply, given the API's that existed before their introduction, it wasn't going to be possible to make siphons undetectable without just chopping that portion of the API off, and considering the number of tools that existing which utilized that part of the API, not only would that of been a damn shame, as 3rd party development is (in my biased opinion) one of the best parts of EvE, but also caused public outcry as the users, and creators of these tools are left out in the cold.

You can find here more details about my position on siphons in my frist campaign, including a post by CCP clearly stating that siphons were not to be detected by API. If the knowledge that siphons would be detected, and that was a technical necessity, I am sure other discussions could have been held to balance the siphon differently.I am not going to focus more on those this year as passive moon income only has a few months left anyway. Still, I do hope the concept of active gameplay siphoning passive income will exist in the future, as this is a design that by its nature would affect more the larger and richer entities of the game to the benefit of the smaller ones.

Christy Cloud wrote:

As for your comments about killboards, there's plenty of kills that go unreported, and if you take a look at many large entitites i.e your dreaded Ploons, you'll see "REDACTED" for system names etc, for a set time after the kill is generated(On their internal bored). A kill can only be "reported" by two players, the person who got the final blow, and the person who lost the ship. If you don't want your kills getting posted to killboards, don't put your API into them and you've cut down the posting already.

If only one of the player has given his API to his corp/alliance, the killmail will be reported no matter what the other player choses. A killmail has to be reported manualy only if neither player belongs to a killboard driven group, which most groups are nowadays. So the odds of a kill not uploaded are really low...

Christy Cloud wrote:

As for tieing alts together? The spy meta is as much eve, as permadeath is, and removing it would be a blow to the game. Also, why should people be forced to only play one persona in EvE? For example I love scamming, but would never scam using the "Christy Cloud" character. EvE is a multi-faceted game and alts help players to experience that.

I am not talking about removing the spy meta. Spies, betrayals and scams are part of Eve because they are also a part of our social construct, and Eve is as much a sci-fi experience as a social one.

The only thing I am pointing out is that there is no drawbacks in the game for having a spy account, and this is the most risk free activity in the game.

My suggestion would introduce a minor economic drawback to not chosing to link one account to the same player's other accounts, and leave to each player the decision to link their account together, with a litttle economic incentive to do so.

So, serious question here. Do you believe that - as a CSM - you will be able to 'make' a feature like this come to fruition? And if so, how would you plan to go about doing so?

You can find here more details about my position on siphons in my frist campaign, including a post by CCP clearly stating that siphons were not to be detected by API. If the knowledge that siphons would be detected, and that was a technical necessity, I am sure other discussions could have been held to balance the siphon differently.I am not going to focus more on those this year as passive moon income only has a few months left anyway. Still, I do hope the concept of active gameplay siphoning passive income will exist in the future, as this is a design that by its nature would affect more the larger and richer entities of the game to the benefit of the smaller ones.

CCP Stated that they were going to make siphons undetectable, and changed the API to reflect this, players then just modified their setups (If I remember rightly you simply piped your income into a second silo, and it displayed the real amount) CCP realised that it was either going to be a game of cat and mouse with 3rd party devs, or a scenario where they just had to chop that section of the API out. So they admitted defeat, and just revealed the true stats.

Borat Guereen wrote:

If only one of the player has given his API to his corp/alliance, the killmail will be reported no matter what the other player choses. A killmail has to be reported manualy only if neither player belongs to a killboard driven group, which most groups are nowadays. So the odds of a kill not uploaded are really low...

That's still an opt-in system, you choose to be in a corp, and that corp chooses to add it's key to a killboard. You say that most corps are, but that doesn't change the fact a group, if they're so worried about the free intel this provides, can simply opt not to.

Borat Guereen wrote:

I am not talking about removing the spy meta. Spies, betrayals and scams are part of Eve because they are also a part of our social construct, and Eve is as much a sci-fi experience as a social one.

The only thing I am pointing out is that there is no drawbacks in the game for having a spy account, and this is the most risk free activity in the game.

My suggestion would introduce a minor economic drawback to not chosing to link one account to the same player's other accounts, and leave to each player the decision to link their account together, with a litttle economic incentive to do so.

This would be an entirely new system, which isn't really the territory of the CSM to drive. Not to mention this does nothing to address the so-called "problem" of unrelated accounts, as the person can just choose to eat whatever "economic drawback" you have in mind. Even in the case of my alts which actively fly together and I have no problem with people knowing are related, I'd opt to not have an actual ingame trail linking them, and that's an opinion I imagine a large percentage of players share.

So, serious question here. Do you believe that - as a CSM - you will be able to 'make' a feature like this come to fruition? And if so, how would you plan to go about doing so?

No.

As I said, I believe CSM members are elected lobbyists, and the CSM should represent a wide variety of play-styles. If I get elected, because this idea is on my platform, it will mean that there is enough players that are interested by it for CCP to consider it seriously.

After that, implementing or not is strictly their decision.

There are precedents of CSM members 'making feature come to fruition' in the past, like lobbying CCP to reduce the connections between WHs and Null Sec to limit more the ability of Wormholers to mess with the Null Sec empires, a PLooNS-centric agenda item.

It's a change to the baseline. Because someone who has a single account would be hit by it.

So what you're really taking about is a bonus for people who have alts. And if I have 4 accounts, I can have 2 sets of related accounts, getting the bonus, without giving away all the information.

(Looking for exploitable issues in proposals _is_ part of the job of the CSM)

I embrace Eve Online for what it is: a game of alts.

It would introduce a concept akin to 'bulk-buying' benefit for those getting multiple accounts and linking them publicly together.

What you seem to be implying if that if I bulk-buy items, I penalize those that only buy one. Is that what you mean when you say that someone with a single account would be hit by it?

One idea I already put out there for discussions (without any visibility into relevant data) present more clearly a possible concept of 'bulk-buying' for Eve accounts:

For each account publicly linked together by the same player, each account benefit from one extra day of subscription.

So if I link 4 accounts publicly together, each account will get 4 extra days of subscription/plexing.If I link publicly two accounts and then two other accounts separately, each accounts will get only 2 extra days of subscription.hence the effect of 'bulk-buying works and those chosing to keep accounts separated would have a minor economic loss in exchange for insulating their in-game actions from their other toons, which currently has 0 drawback.

Obviously, measures have to be put to define and control what defines as "same player", but CCP already gathers a bunch of relevant information about each account.

CCP Stated that they were going to make siphons undetectable, and changed the API to reflect this, players then just modified their setups (If I remember rightly you simply piped your income into a second silo, and it displayed the real amount) CCP realised that it was either going to be a game of cat and mouse with 3rd party devs, or a scenario where they just had to chop that section of the API out. So they admitted defeat, and just revealed the true stats.

True. What I am saying is that this fundamentally changed the usefulness of the siphons, and their design should have been revised, but did not because nobody in the CSM cared, as they were mostly representing the player base that would be most impacted by a more efficient siphoning mechanic.

Christy Cloud wrote:

That's still an opt-in system, you choose to be in a corp, and that corp chooses to add it's key to a killboard. You say that most corps are, but that doesn't change the fact a group, if they're so worried about the free intel this provides, can simply opt not to.

Your agument is specious. When you enter a corp and most alliances today, you *have* to give APIs and you have no options to opt out of feeding killboards if you want to stay.

Christy Cloud wrote:

This would be an entirely new system, which isn't really the territory of the CSM to drive. Not to mention this does nothing to address the so-called "problem" of unrelated accounts, as the person can just choose to eat whatever "economic drawback" you have in mind. Even in the case of my alts which actively fly together and I have no problem with people knowing are related, I'd opt to not have an actual ingame trail linking them, and that's an opinion I imagine a large percentage of players share.

This is all I am asking, an option with a carrot. On my previous campaigns I approached this with a stick mentality, which was wrong. There is no way to address the problem of unrelated accounts, other than encouraging a minor positive economic benefit for those that chose to link their accounts together, that the scammers could not benefit from.

So, serious question here. Do you believe that - as a CSM - you will be able to 'make' a feature like this come to fruition? And if so, how would you plan to go about doing so?

No.

As I said, I believe CSM members are elected lobbyists, and the CSM should represent a wide variety of play-styles. If I get elected, because this idea is on my platform, it will mean that there is enough players that are interested by it for CCP to consider it seriously.

After that, implementing or not is strictly their decision.

There are precedents of CSM members 'making feature come to fruition' in the past, like lobbying CCP to reduce the connections between WHs and Null Sec to limit more the ability of Wormholers to mess with the Null Sec empires, a PLooNS-centric agenda item.

Thank you for clarifying that. I see many candidates running with the sole intent of getting one or two features added, which is simply not the purview of the CSM, and basically just lying to those who vote for you. I will not address the ideas, as quite frankly I don't see that as part of the CSM process. Saying you're in favour of something is just a way to make your positon on an issue more clear and I can respect that.

What would you say your areas of expertise are within the game, either in terms of community or mechanical knowledge?

Ethical Solo

You say you have all of this experience—started in 2009, was in NC., did a lot in NS, lived in wormholes, etc. However, do you have any evidence of this experience? Your corp history doesn't show it; and your killboard certainly does not show you have much experience with the game, either. You must be posting on an alt, then. But for all we know, unless you share that info, you could be someone completely different. At the very least, we don't have any evidence you are qualified in the gameplay mechanics you say you are.

Here is one advantage of public killboards: they allow people to see what sort of experiences you have, which is especially useful for things like running for CSM.

Ironically, your stance against public killboards conflicts with your goal of running for the CSM as well as your goals for the CSM. Killboards, for one, let us see the pilot's experience. One of your goals is “Better expose the influences of older players.” Except you don't do that by making certain intel less public and making it harder to validate the claims players make about themselves or who they are and making it easier to hide in-game activities. That's like saying you want to hold the government more accountable, and then proposing to remove all oversight and eithcs committees.

You say you have all of this experience—started in 2009, was in NC., did a lot in NS, lived in wormholes, etc. However, do you have any evidence of this experience? Your corp history doesn't show it; and your killboard certainly does not show you have much experience with the game, either. You must be posting on an alt, then. But for all we know, unless you share that info, you could be someone completely different. At the very least, we don't have any evidence you are qualified in the gameplay mechanics you say you are.

Here is one advantage of public killboards: they allow people to see what sort of experiences you have, which is especially useful for things like running for CSM.

Ironically, your stance against public killboards conflicts with your goal of running for the CSM as well as your goals for the CSM. Killboards, for one, let us see the pilot's experience. One of your goals is “Better expose the influences of older players.” Except you don't do that by making certain intel less public and making it harder to validate the claims players make about themselves or who they are and making it easier to hide in-game activities. That's like saying you want to hold the government more accountable, and then proposing to remove all oversight and eithcs committees.

Through the various articles on our alliance web page, it is fairly easy to identify my alts for those looking for them. There is no reason for me to make it easier to find, though, until this applies for all players.

My alts can be judged by "elitists" players the way they want to, I do not care. Elitists player have amount of intel and resources that I do not have, i.e. we play differently.

"If you control a character that is well known in the EVE community, CCP may require you to run under that identity and not one of an alt or a lesser known character."

This alt is my well-known alt. Like I mentioned before starting campaigning for the play-style I like best, none of my other alts were known..

in fact I did play for years without any real awareness of the larger community (I am not a "social"), until the siphons and the ESS got released, and their features made useless by the nerf of waste and API ratting for the siphons and for the ESS, their design intent negated by placing them in anomalies with no risks to the defenders.These are the reasons I decided to get more involved to defend the game features that could have helped develop my prefered play-style further.

I also assumed that I could not be the only lurker out there with this kind of play-style.